ZEEL’s sprint to a deal: how Punit Goenka avoided ‘jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire’

Grappling with a looming debt-repayment deadline, a stock crash, the general elections, and a high-profile but ultimately failed negotiation, ZEEL’s managing director and CEO brought home an INR4,224 crore deal with an old confidant — in all of two months. Investors are still not fully convinced, but it has given the company precious time to sort out its debt mess.

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[manner] is very critical. And most importantly, it’s better to solve a problem part by part rather than trying to solve everything together,” he says. ( Disclaimer: ET Prime's parent, the Times Group, and ZEEL own competing businesses.) *( Clarification: The debt accrued to the promoter group and not ZEEL. We have updated the story to reflect this.)

At 2.15 pm on Wednesday, July 31, Punit Goenka signed the most anxiously watched deal of his career. The managing director and chief executive officer of Zee Entertainment Enterprises (ZEEL) ended his company’s eight-and-a-half-month-old fund-raising ordeal, selling 11% stake to Invesco Oppenheimer Developing Markets Fund. It fetched the promoter group desperate for cash INR4,224 crore.* Goenka had spent

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[manner] is very critical. And most importantly, it’s better to solve a problem part by part rather than trying to solve everything together,” he says. ( Disclaimer: ET Prime's parent, the Times Group, and ZEEL own competing businesses.) *( Clarification: The debt accrued to the promoter group and not ZEEL. We have updated the story to reflect this.)

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